A Slide Master is the part of your presentation that influences everything from the slide background to the fonts used for text. All slides in your presentation may have different layouts but they all share a common look -- that look is provided by the Slide Master. Every presentation has at least one Slide Master. However, if you constantly keep adding slides from other presentations, you may have added more Slide Masters to your presentation. So how do you know how many Slide Masters your presentation contains? And how do you add another one? In fact, why do you need another Slide Master at all?

Those are great questions, and we shall explore all answers. First things first though -- let us find out how many Slide Masters your presentation contains. To find out, access the Home tab of the Ribbon, and click the Layout button -- this brings up the Layout drop-down gallery you see in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: The Layout gallery

Notice that most new presentations you create in PowerPoint contain just one Slide Master based on the Office Theme -- you can see the Theme name highlighted in red within Figure 1, above. Now that we have established the fact that most new presentations contain at least a single Slide Master, why would you need to add a new Slide Master? The reasons may differ but for most users that's because they want their slides to contain two or more different looks (backgrounds, colors, fonts, effects, etc.). For design purists, it is difficult to justify this as a reason -- most professional PowerPoint template designers will only add a second Slide Master for small and subtle differences. Whatever your opinion may be, it's actually quite easy to add a new Slide Master:

Adding a new Slide Master

Launch PowerPoint and open the presentation that needs a new Slide Master. Next, access the View tab of the Ribbon, and click the Slide Master button -- this opens the Slide Master view, as shown in Figure 2. Here, within the pane on the left, you'll find the default Slide Master with associated layouts (highlighted in red within Figure 2).

Figure 2: Default Slide Master

To add a new Slide Master, click the Insert Slide Master button within the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.

Figure 3: Insert Slide Master button

Alternatively, right-click the existing Slide Master in the left pane, and choose the Insert Slide Master option from the contextual menu that appears, as shown in Figure 4, below.

Figure 4: Insert Slide Master option within the contextual menu

Tip: You can also press the Ctrl+M keyboard shortcut in Slide Master view to add a new Slide Master.

Either of these options will add a new Slide Master, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 5. Notice that this new Slide Master is numbered 2, since this is the second Slide Master of your presentation.

Figure 5: New Slide Master inserted

Adding a Slide Master applied with a Theme

You can also add a Slide Master from any of existing Themes within PowerPoint. This can be helpful if you want the new Slide Master to be based on a Theme that's not part of the current presentation. To learn how you can do so, follow these steps:

Access the Slide Master view as explained in Step 1 in the preceding section. Thereafter, click at the end of your existing Slide Master (below the last Slide Layout thumbnail) to place an insertion cursor, as shown in Figure 6. Now click the Themes button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 6.

Figure 6: Themes button

This brings up the Themes drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 7. Click on a Theme of your choice.

Figure 7: Themes drop-down gallery

This will add a new Slide Master with the selected Theme applied, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 8. Notice that this new Slide Master is numbered 2, since this is the second Slide Master of your presentation.

Figure 8: New Slide Master gets added along with the selected Theme applied

Once you have added the new Slide Master following any of the ways explained above, you can make changes to the newly added Slide Master as required.

Renaming the Slide Master

To rename the Slide Master follow these steps:

Select and right-click the Slide Master and select the Rename Master option from the contextual menu that appears. This will bring up the Rename Layout window, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Rename the new Slide Master

Just type in the name you like and click the Rename button.

After adding and renaming the new Slide Master, click the Close Master View button on the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon (highlighted in blue within Figure 8).This will get you back to Normal view. Now access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Layout button to bring up the Layout drop-down gallery you see in Figure 10, below. Notice that now there are two Slide Masters within the Layout drop-down gallery (names highlighted in red within Figure 10, below). Compare Figures 1 and 10.

Have your ever used keyboard shortcuts and sequences in PowerPoint? Or are you a complete keyboard aficionado? Do you want to learn about some new shortcuts? Or do you want to know if your favorite keyboard shortcuts are documented?